Sport and Cinema.com

From Sony Pictures Home Entertainment comes “Moneyball” onto DVD, a film using the business of baseball as a backdrop to examine what drives people to take risks. Based on Michael Lewis’s non-fiction book of the same name, this is the story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to acquire players.

They swing from both sides of the plate. They maximize the time to see the pitch. They get a head start to first base. They come from many different positions (even catcher, Ted Simmons).

Lists and debates, a long-standing component of sports media, continues with the release of an all-new 3 hour DVD from Major League Baseball Productions and A&E Home Entertainment -PRIME 9: MLB HEROICS

Now in play and running through May 1st, Tribeca, with partner ESPN, present a compelling and diverse slate of sports documentary films in its 10th annual gathering throughout New York City.

Authors Tobias Moskowitz and Jon Wertheim present an intriguing guide to a wide array of both complex and heretofore seemingly mundane topics that go far beyond the scoreboard to help fans get at the truths of sports

One of sports’ most iconic venues is appropriately given all-star treatment in celebrating its 100th anniversary in this compelling and picturesque book.

The curtain has fallen on a new and compelling “television film festival”. ESPN has just concluded its opening run of thirty engaging and provocative movies, premiering 14 months ago. Meticulous and sharply observed, this “30 for 30” project has been as ambitious an undertaking as anything the network has done.

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and co-director Lynn Novick go deep with an extra inning chapter to their earlier work about the sport.

This installment brings the national pastime’s recent history up-to-date, covering the years 1994-2009.

How was it that a pudgy 20-year-old, Mexican, left-handed pitcher from a remote village in the Sonoran desert, unable to speak a word of English, could sell out stadiums across America and become a rock star overnight?

While on assignment writing a football story for the Los Angeles Times Down Under in Melbourne, Australia, I had the good fortune to catch up recently with noted Aussie director, Fred Schepisi.

With credits like The Russia House, Barbarosa, Empire Falls and Roxanne and busily editing his latest picture, The Secret River, the native of Victoria spent some time in his Melbourne high-rise to discuss his well-received fish-out-of-water sports comedy Mr. Baseball. The picture features Tom Selleck as a fading baseball player traded to a Japanese team and has trouble fitting into that culture.